After spending over 50 years on and around the water, I have realized that without strong fisheries laws and effective conservation measures, the future of salt water fishing, and America's living marine resources, is dim. Yet conservation is given short shrift by national angling organizations and the angling press. I hope that this blog will incite, inform and inspire salt water fishermen to reclaim their traditional role as the leading advocates for the conservation of America's fisheries.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

NEW JERSEY FLUKE TANTRUM FLUSTERS ASMFC

Like a petulant child who employs every trick in the book to
avoid eating his broccoli or going to bed at the appointed hour, the State of
New Jersey will do everything that it possibly can to evade regulations that might
hinder Garden State anglers’ ability to kill too many fish.

The state’s current effort to oppose regulations intended to
halt the decline in the summer flounder population, and keep the stock from
slipping beneath the overfishing threshold, is a clear case in point.

While it required area fishermen to give up 2 fish in their
bag limit and raised the minimum size by an inch, it was far less restrictive
than anything else that had been proposed.
Most anglers, in just about any other state on the coast, would have
been happy that the regulations wouldn’t be any worse.

Not a single so-called leader of the local angling community
had the guts to stand up and tell anglers the unvarnished truth: That recruitment has been down for the past
six years, the population is in decline and action needs to be taken to prevent
the stock from becoming overfished.

No one, including the state’s fishery managers, was willing
to accept the state’s moral responsibility to help all of the other coastal
states in their efforts to halt the population’s decline and begin building it
back to sustainable levels.

Instead, they all whined, and if they stopped resembling a
spoiled toddler at all, it was only to adopt the pose of a junior-high diva who
would just die, and have her life ruined, if she had to abide by a 10:00 p.m.
curfew on a summer Saturday night—except, in this case, the
divas of New Jersey’s angling world emoted that

The
State of New Jersey filed a formal appeal of ASMFC’s decision, arguing that
the state shouldn’t have to be bound by the regulations that the Management
Board adopted in February, alleged that the Management Board didn’t consider
the resulting economic hardship, questionable science and, yes, printing errors
in the draft document that went out to public hearing when it made its
decision. The first two issues were
dismissed out of hand—they had already been discussed in great detail by the
Management Board—but the printing error may eventually be given a brief
hearing.

Such a request would have been impossible under the regional
management system that existed in 2014 and 2015, which included New Jersey in a
region that included the other two states.
However, in
2016, managers made the mistake of allowing New Jersey to become its own region,
so that its anglers fishing Delaware Bay could enjoy regulations less
restrictive than the rest of the coast.
Even though the 2016 action compelled the rest of the state to adopt
regulations similar to those in Connecticut and New York, it created a
vulnerability that could be exploited by New Jersey at this week’s meeting.

So it looks like the fluke debate will go on. New York and Connecticut will open their
seasons next week, having responsibly adopted the regulations that ASMFC
approved in February. On the other hand,
New Jersey’s irresponsibility may well be rewarded, and when its season opens on
May 25, it is not unlikely that anglers there will still be able to keep
18-inch fish.

There is still hope that mature deliberation will ultimately
prevail, and that the Technical Committee and/or the Management Board will not
allow New Jersey to get its way and upend the regional structure that has
helped to create equitable and consistent regulations in the tri-state area. On the morning of May 11, ASMFC’s Interstate
Fisheries Management Program Policy Board voted to declare New Jersey out of compliance
with the Commission’s management plan, an action which could lead to a complete closure of the
state’s fishery, should the Management Board ultimately disapprove the 18-inch
size limit and shortened season.

However, for the moment, the whiners seem to have won.

They now stand a good chance of escaping any
obligation to share the burden of rebuilding the fluke population with
Connecticut, New York and the rest of the states. New Jersey anglers may once again enjoy
regulations less restrictive than those imposed on all of the other anglers in
the tri-state region.

And it’s largely the other states’ fault.

Regardless of the species involved, New Jersey always tries
to manipulate the numbers, and its fellow ASMFC members, in a way that allows
them to kill more and smaller fish than their neighboring states.

We saw that after Addendum
IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management
Plan was adopted in 2014. New
Jersey convinced ASMFC’s Striped Bass Management Board to allow the state to
employ “conservation equivalency” to adopt a 2-fish bag limit, rather than the
one-fish bag adopted by all but one of the other states, in exchange for
adopting specific slot limits, rather than a single 28-inch minimum size, for
each of the striped bass taken.

Its more recent, successful effort to leave the tri-state summer
flounder management region that it shared with New York and Connecticut, in
order to win relaxed regulations in Delaware Bay, was already described
above.

Now, instead of being grateful that ASMFC was willing to
help out Delaware Bay anglers, New Jersey is taking advantage of its status as
a separate region to demand even more special treatment.

It’s well past time for a little tough love.

It’s time for the other states to put their foot down, and
insist that New Jersey play by the same rules that apply to everyone else.

And if New Jersey throws a tantrum when told to behave, it’s
time to give the state a time out, by enforcing the non-compliance finding and
imposing a 0-fish bag and 0-day season, until the folks there finally learn
that if they want to enjoy the right to exploit fisheries resources, they need
to accept the accompanying responsibilities.

If they’re not willing to do their part to clean up the mess that they
helped to create, they should be banned from the playground.

Spoiled children always want more. If New Jersey gets its 18-inch fluke limit
this year, they won’t just say thanks and play nice. Next year, they’ll demand something else, most
likely the pre-2014 allocation scheme that gave the state 39% of all the
recreationally-caught fluke on the coast.
If they don’t insist on that—at least not right away—it will be
something else, because brats keep on whining until adults say “No!” and stand
firm.

2 comments:

Why be so combative?You need to be more understanding of opposing opinions.Are you really that confident and arrogant, that most anglers in NJ are wrong?The petition has 7,500 signatures, the governor is opposed, the NJ department of environmental protection is opposed.I get you are an environmental zealot, but please, it is you that is whining on this blog that NOBODY reads.